Battlestorm

by Susan Krinard

  “But he possesses power, does he not? The ability to create manifestations, and open portals from one part of Midgard to another?”

  So he knows that, too, Mist thought. “Loki forced him to act against us in the beginning, All-father,” she said, “but he has done nothing for many months.”

  “Hasn’t he?” Odin stroked his beard and studied Mist intently. “Is it true that he previously led you to Sleipnir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Vali suggests that you may bear the child some affection, in spite of his parentage.”

  “Not all children are like their parents,” Mist said, praying that her gaze was as steady as her words. “He doesn’t seem to have any use for Loki.”

  “And Loki? Does he feel affection for the boy?”

  “I don’t know, All-father. With Loki, it’s impossible to tell.”

  “Ah,” Odin said. “But Loki has always been capable of feeling—sometimes too much to be skoruligr, manly.” He shook his head, as if at some private memory. “The child might be of some use as a hostage, but it would be better still if you can convince him to turn his power to our service. And since he is seemingly in hiding with Sleipnir, we may take both before the Slanderer can find them.”

  “Yes, All-father,” she said, concealing her despair. Odin would never hurt him, she told herself. He’ll be safe from Loki. He’ll be safe.…

  “Then we are in agreement,” Odin said, as if he required her assent. “It will please you to know that once we have Sleipnir, you will ride with your Sisters again.”

  “Eir is gone,” Mist said, fighting a fresh wave of grief, “and Horja died years ago. Sigrun has chosen a path that has taken her far from us. Kara and the Gjallarhorn are still missing. Rota and Hild are well, but Bryn—”

  “I feel her,” Odin said, touching the pouch that hung against Mist’s chest. “When my magic is fully restored, I will restore her as well.”

  “Thank you, All-father.”

  “You may show your gratitude by using every means at your disposal to summon as many mortals as you can in the next few days, while I make preparations to seek my mount. I grow weary of waiting. These mortals must be trained quickly to attack Loki on many fronts when we take the war to him. Even those unable to fight can serve their purpose.”

  Mist had a terrible idea what he meant by “purpose.” Cannon-fodder, perhaps? Convenient “diversions” whose deaths would be considered no more than collateral damage?

  But hadn’t she been thinking the same thing before Dainn had “knocked” Freya’s ghost out of her head? She’d been willing to compel mortals into service, even if they didn’t understand what they were getting into. Even if they had to die without knowing why.

  Odin seemed to read her thoughts. “You question my judgment,” he said, disappointment in his voice. “Have you become weak, living among these mortals for so many years?”

  Mist shivered. Loki had said nearly the same thing to her on several occasions. He had been mocking, but Odin was deadly serious.

  “I will be patient with you, my Valkyrie,” Odin said. “I have my own army of Einherjar, planted on this world when I sent you here with the Treasures.”

  Einherjar? Mist thought numbly. He could have no more loyal warriors than those who had died on mortal battlefields, only to rise again in Asgard as ageless as the gods.

  I’ll have to tell Vixen and Rick, she thought. If they keep calling their club the Einherjar …

  “Do you hear me, Mist? I will not waste my men on minor skirmishes. It will be your duty to make your mortals and Alfar understand that as they serve me with absolute obedience, they fight for their own survival and a worthy place among my Einherjar when Loki is defeated.”

  Absolute obedience by men and women who might never even have heard of Odin All-father? Doubt pinched Mist’s gut like scouting microbes paving the way for a long and unpleasant illness.

  But Odin was the cure. She had been weak, and he was right. The world had to purge itself of evil before it could be safe again, no matter what the cost.

  Whatever Freya had planned for her daughter, Mist had always served Odin. And always would.

  “I will find the mortals we need,” she said.

  “I never doubted your loyalty.” Odin’s body began to grow hazy around the edges. “And do not cease searching for the Gjallarhorn.”

  Within moments, he was gone. Anna, who had been so quiet that Mist had nearly forgotten her, stared at the place he had been, as if his disappearance had left her without purpose or volition.

  Mist wondered what had happened to change Anna so much. She’d been deeply connected to Orn, and Orn had been Odin all along. His transformation from raven to god would be enough to mess with anyone’s head.

  Had she become no more than another one of his servants, after all she’d done to protect him? Was Horja’s influence coming to the fore? Did Anna remember “becoming” Rebekka when she’d come to fetch Mist?

  Pressing her lips together, Mist crouched to pick up one of the raven feathers left scattered on the floor. “Odin’s gone for now,” she said gently. “But we have a lot of work to do. We have to redouble our efforts to find Kara and the Gjallarhorn. You can help with that.”

  She waited to see if Anna understood. After a pause, the young woman shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I have to stay with Orn. You understand.”

  Mist suppressed a shiver. She remembered the pendant, clutched forgotten in her hand. “You should take this back.”

  Anna covered Mist’s hand with her own and folded Mist’s fingers around the stone. “I’m glad you have it again,” she said, only the subtlest trace of sadness in her voice. She turned and rushed out of the building without a backward glance.

  Mist was still staring at the open door long after Anna was gone, trying to prioritize the tasks she had to perform in addition to fulfilling Odin’s commands. One of them was finding Konur and Ryan. She had a few stringent things to say to her second “father.” And she had to see Dainn, to warn him that Odin had finally come.

  The pendant bit into her hand, and she opened her fingers. It would be rank disloyalty to help Dainn escape, a betrayal as terrible as any Dainn himself had committed. But he had never been the irredeemable traitor the Aesir and Alfar had declared him to be.

  The cold, hard fact was that she still didn’t understand Dainn, or what lay hidden in the deepest shadows of his mind. And she didn’t know how much Odin knew about Dainn’s part in Freya’s plans or the depth of his relationship with Mist.

  But if she didn’t protect Dainn, Odin would almost certainly decide to rid himself of Freya’s former servant as soon as he had questioned the elf about Loki.

  At least if Odin caught her, Mist thought, she knew that the All-father could lead the allies to victory without her.

  * * *

  Freya is dead.

  The explosive words that had stupefied Mist’s councilors nearly paralyzed Loki as well. As the Alfar and mortals began to file out of the room, he adjusted his position on the wall, twitching both forelegs and antennae in an elaborate pattern, drawing cold out of the floor and spinning Rune-staves that crept like fingers of hoarfrost toward the feet of his enemy.

  For a few seconds, Mist was too preoccupied to notice them, even when one icy finger touched the heel of her boot. Then she looked down, and Loki withdrew the spell back into himself, turning his dark exoskeleton ghostly pale and stiffening his joints. When he could move again, he nearly flung himself against the bottom of the door.

  Freya was dead. And Loki understood what he had felt when he had flown under the wards … the magic he had followed across the camp, the sense of something new and dangerous.

  “There may be as yet untapped abilities within Mist that only Freya can awaken,” Dainn had once told him, with complete and prophetic honesty.

  With a furious beating of fragile wings, Loki fled the warehouse. His laughter emerged as the faintest buzz. Heedl
ess of those who might notice a particularly handsome and unusually purposeful fly, he launched himself toward the nearest border of the ward, passed through the barrier, and flew on until he could fly no more. He plummeted onto the lid of a rubbish can left in an alley and fell to the asphalt, spinning helplessly on his back until he found the strength to regain his true shape.

  As weak as he was, he found the energy to pull his cell phone from his jacket’s inner pocket and called Vali. Odin’s son came himself, appearing a little less offensively unflappable than usual.

  “Boss?” he asked, helping Loki to his feet while the other Jotunar and the black limousine waited at the mouth of the alley.

  “Were you aware that Orn has returned?” Loki demanded.

  Vali blinked, giving the impression of a mindless, cud-chewing cow suddenly confronted with one of Odin’s ravenous wolves. “Odin’s messenger?” he asked.

  Loki brushed off his leather pants and cast Vali a withering look. “There have been no raven sightings lately?”

  “No, boss. Where did you see him?”

  “I didn’t. But I know he has returned, and is involved with Mist again.”

  “That ain’t good,” Vali said.

  Loki straightened. “How stunningly perceptive you are,” he said. “I would almost think you’re playing stupid because you have a guilty conscience.”

  “You mean I should have known that Orn came back? I don’t have any connection to him now. Aside from you, I’m the last person he’d come to.”

  Batting Vali’s arm away, Loki started toward the limo. “Now I know it was not Freya who infiltrated my house.”

  “Orn?” Vali asked as Loki climbed into the rear of the limo, wincing at sore joints and aching bones. “He worked a spell that strong?”

  Loki opened the minibar and selected a glass. “He was unable to take the Treasures, but he has power he did not possess before. And I believe I know why.” The glass shattered in his hand, and blood spattered the smooth leather of the seat.

  “Odin is here.”

  * * *

  When they arrived at Loki’s mansion, he took the back stairs to the second floor and opened the heavy doors, bypassing Danny’s still-empty room and continuing to the end of the short hall.

  The last room hadn’t been used since just after Loki had purchased the building. Now the door swung open with an ominous groan, rather like the dead bewailing their fates.

  As it happened, the dead were not in view, but their mistress certainly was. Hel sat on a throne built of bones and draped with skins of questionable origins, her face—half-dark, half-light—beautiful and ugly and utterly cold.

  “Father,” she said in her hoarse, brittle voice. “At last you deign to visit me?”

  Loki closed the door. “My dear,” he said, “I do not mean to keep you prisoner, but it wouldn’t do to let our enemies know that you are among us.”

  “The ones who came here believed I was an illusion,” she said with a bitter smile.

  “And you told me it was Freya you saw,” he said. “It was not.”

  She lifted a pale brow. “So I have been told.” She raised her hand, and half-formed figures drifted out of the darkness behind her: the recent dead, distinguished by the expressions of horror on their faces. Confined though they were to Niflheim, they could be given solid form in order to kill … and to die again.

  “This,” Hel said, gesturing to a tall mortal, “was one of the Einherjar who accompanied the thieves.”

  Loki smiled. Odin’s eternal warriors were not so eternal when Hel’s minions took them down.

  “What is your name?” Loki asked the Einherji.

  The man’s mouth moved stiffly, as if he were only just becoming used to his phantom bones. “Hrothgar,” he said.

  Loki peered into the pale, tormented face. “Who brought you to Midgard?”

  “The All-father,” Hrothgar whispered.

  “When?”

  “My guests have no sense of time, Father,” Hel said with a roll of her bloodshot eyes.

  Loki was reminded how like him she could be. The comparison did not particularly please him.

  “Did Orn see my son?” Loki asked the warrior.

  With a breathy wail, Hrothgar collapsed to the floor. “I should not be here,” he whined. “Take me to Valhalla.”

  “There is no Valhalla,” Loki said. “No lovely afterlife of swilling mead, swinging swords, and swiving beautiful women. But you will have many more of your comrades to keep you company soon.”

  Hel leaned forward, searching Loki’s face. “Are we finally to have a proper battle?”

  “Can you summon more of the dead?”

  “The way is open,” she said, “thanks to my little brother, though I do not believe he understood what he did. I will need your help.”

  “You will have it after you have proven your loyalty to me. The wait will be worth it, I assure you.”

  “But how can you doubt my devotion, Father?”

  “Fenrir failed to pass a most basic test of his competence by allowing Sleipnir to escape. I hope that you perform better than your brother.”

  “I will not disappoint you.” Twitching her fingers, Hel dismissed Hrothgar. He faded back among the others clustered behind Hel’s throne. Loki turned toward the door.

  “Father,” Hel said. She rose from the throne, and her robes parted, revealing the rotting flesh of her legs. “Do send me more bones. I am exceedingly hungry.”

  “And I should not want my beloved daughter to die of starvation,” Loki said. “Make yourself ready to aid me when I call you.”

  * * *

  Ryan broke away from the Alfar and stared across the vast expanse of parking lots, astonished by what Mist had done in less than a week. Every free square foot of concrete and asphalt was occupied with people—mainly humans, with a healthy portion of Alfar—marching in columns like soldiers, practicing with swords and axes, all in constant motion.

  Mist was finally building a real army.

  Ryan heard Konur come up behind him and steadfastly ignored the elf-lord. He didn’t know what pissed him off more: the fact that Konur had known what Freya planned for Mist and hadn’t warned her, or that he’d kept Ryan a virtual prisoner since he and Dainn had fought on the waterfront.

  But at least Freya hadn’t won. Konur had told him that the fight was over—though he hadn’t said how he knew—and that Mist was alive.

  Ryan had allowed himself to wonder if maybe his warning Freya about Sleipnir had brought about the consequences he’d hoped for, and actually led to her defeat. But he knew he couldn’t take the credit. Mist had done it, just like she’d brought all these people together to fight for their world.

  Of course Sleipnir was still missing, but at least some of the other news was good. According to Captain Taylor, Dainn was okay, even if he was still a prisoner, and Loki hadn’t tried anything for days.

  The bad news was that Gabi had been making herself scarce while Ryan was away, and no one knew where she’d been. Soon after Eir had died, she’d claimed that she couldn’t heal anymore, and Ryan was more than a little worried that she’d gone back to “spying” on Loki’s gangbangers and drug dealers the way she had before he’d gone to Mother Skye. She’d been using her ex-con brother, Ramon, as a contact, and that was dangerous work. But if she didn’t think she could help any other way …

  Something tickled the corner of Ryan’s vision, breaking the train of his thoughts, and he looked up. The raven was back, just as he’d known it would be.

  Mist was waiting for them near the small unfinished warehouse, arms folded across her chest. She gave Konur a cool, unreadable glance, and Ryan thought of the excuse he and the elf had concocted to explain their absence. Ryan had only agreed to the deception because he didn’t have the guts to tell Mist that he’d never found a way to warn her about Freya.

  Only he couldn’t have told her even if he’d been brave enough, because apparently she wasn’t ready to admit to anyone
in camp what had really happened. Why should she, when revealing what Freya had tried to do would only raise all kinds of questions and make her job that much harder?

  “Captain Taylor,” Mist said, dismissing the former Marine with a brief nod before turning to Ryan. “Are you all right? When Konur sent word that you’d had another seizure—”

  “I’m fine.” Ryan flushed and ran his hand over his left sleeve, as if it were still coated in dirt and crumbled concrete from the back lot of the warehouse. “I’m sorry. I thought they were over with.”

  “Now that we know they aren’t, you’re going to have to be a lot more careful.” She frowned at him. “Konur said you saw something about me in the future, and that you tried to force a vision. That was a bad idea. I’m glad that Konur and his healers were able to help you recover.”

  “Are you okay?” Ryan asked quickly.

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” Her eyes narrowed. “If what you saw was something bad, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want you to think about it for one more second. Agreed?”

  Ryan clamped his lips together and nodded. Mist looked up to watch Konur approach.

  “There is something you can tell me,” she said. “When you were with him, did he say anything about being my father?”

  At least I don’t have to lie about that, Ryan thought. He didn’t know who had told her, but he suspected Dainn. It wouldn’t have been an easy thing to talk about. Or to accept.

  “Konur told me,” he admitted.

  “And did he happen to mention why he felt the need to take you so far from camp to help you?”

  There was definitely suspicion in her voice, and Ryan thought it was exactly what Konur deserved. “He told me that letting me stay near camp when I was already sick was—”

  “It would have been most inadvisable,” Konur said, coming up beside Ryan. “But I should have informed you from the beginning.” He scanned the parking lots. “It seems that my lieutenants have done well enough in my place.”

  He and Mist gazed at each other, and Ryan wondered who was going to be next to speak.

  “I know who you are,” Mist said at last.